Notes from Nicole

I have lived in the Midwest my entire life. I have been surrounded by cornfields, dirt roads and small towns. Some may consider those things a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. The one thing that really sticks out in my mind though is the snowstorms that we used to get as a kid. I don't know if it is one of those times when as a child everything seems bigger than life and then in adulthood you realize just how small something truly was? But I know that some of the snowstorms that happened during my childhood were huge, by any means of measuring! The current weather forecast for our area in the next couple of days is predicting one of those good old fashioned, huge snow storms. Now, some people will panic and head to the grocery store and clean out the bread aisle, the milk cooler and the egg cooler, because of the "maybe" snowstorm. These folks would be your former boy scouts and girl scouts who still live by the "be prepared" motto

Have you ever bought a loaf of bread and then somehow a small hole gets poked into the bag and all of the sudden you have a loaf of stale bread? I have done that several times, and it is usually when I am ready to pack someone's lunch and that is the only bread I have left in the house! Those are the days where my kids get crackers with their meat and cheese:) I was thinking about this staleness as something that can also happen to us as Christians. What can make us or our faith go stale? There are lots of things. If we do not stay fresh in the Word, it can cause us to become stale. So stale, in fact, that reading the Bible has become a chore that we try to avoid doing. So stale, that going to church or sunday school has become a chore that we try to avoid, as well. I know that there are many, many, many things going on in our lives, but when we put those things first and God last, it is like poking holes of doubt and discontent into our faith. These are some excuses that